Later this month Activision will unleash it’s latest Guitar Hero video game on the general public, this time with more instruments and features than anyone of the previous three versions. Although there are many aspects of the game that fans will recognize, World Tour is an entirely new experience; unlike anything music fans have seen before. A couple weeks ago we got a chance to spend some time with the near final build and can only say we walked away very impressed and excited for what’s to come.
Walking into the venue we were far from enthusiastic about seeing another music game; the PR reps had promised us something different, something fun and wow were they right. The biggest and most obvious addition to Guitar Hero: World Tour is the inclusion of other instruments besides the standard lead guitar, now we get to jam out with a lead guitar, bass guitar, drums, and microphone. This may sound familiar to those gamers who have spent time with Rock Band but Activision improves upon the formula just enough to fans of the RB series a reason to try out something different.
Besides having the best “guitar” technology available this generation (Guitar Hero 1-3 proved that), developer Neversoft has been in the music game business for a long time. With World Tour they decided to take all that information they had learned and put it all into one project, their “holy grail” of music video games. That project eventually became Guitar Hero: World Tour and is shaping up to inherit all that money available in the music side of the gaming industry. Ever since Rock Band first made it’s appearance some years ago gamers have been involved in heated debates over which game is better. The comparisons were never really fair, up until now, because of the fact that Guitar Hero only focused on one instrument.
This move to four instruments (see image below) has some Guitar Hero fans worried about whether or not the strength previous GH games had in the guitar department will disappear. The first thing we did when we got to the World Tour event was try out the guitar and let us be the first to tell you that all those worries are without merit. Neversoft has come up with a new physical guitar design that blows all the previous ones out of the water, by miles. Not only does the new guitar feel much sturdier and solid, it now has a digital slide bar at the bottom of the neck allowing for some unbelievable solos.
The new drums are something that we only got to spend a small amount of time with but during that play testing it was evident that the designers behind them learned a lot from mistakes made in the Rock Band franchise. Some of the improvements (two high pads) are more noticeable while others (quiet striking pads) will not be noticed until the gamer gets home and starts to jam. Singing in World Tour is much like other karaoke titles and works just fine for what it is, something that should be avoided until after a few drinks.
Other than gameplay we were treated to a showing of the new “recording studio” mode (see image below), setup throughout the location in a number of top quality studios. We doubt many gamers will have access to such technology but it’s still nice to see that the game can cooperate with the high-end stuff. The amount of possibilities that this feature brings to Guitar Hero: World Tour is endless and Activision is banking on that. A number of producers emphasized this fact during our discussions and are very passionate about the studio mode. This is not some add-on thrown together at the last minute to increase sales. We can talk more about the specifics in our review but for now all you need to know is that the mode is there and is fantastically feature intensive.
By the time we left the event in Los Angeles we were much more excited about Guitar Hero: World Tour than when we arrived. The new innovative instruments and insane amount of features that the game possesses remind us why this company was the first to make a successful music title in this industry. We didn’t even get to go into how great the set list is, rivaling any rock and rollers vinyl collection. World Tour will release onto the country on October 28, 2008 so stay tuned for our full review around that time, until then make sure to keep practicing whatever music game you are playing in preparation for the master of them all; Guitar Hero: World Tour.
